


Shatter the Past

by orphan_account



Category: Cabin Pressure, Honourable Schoolboy - John Le Carre
Genre: Battambang, Dubious Timeline, M/M, PTSD, revisiting the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:17:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking an American food critic and his crew to Cambodia was inconvenient enough. Taking them to Battambang was about the worst thing that could have happened to Douglas Richardson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Knowelge of John LeCarre's _The Honorable Schoolboy_ isn't particularly necessary here – short of the fact that Jerry Westerby, a spy for the British Intelligence, was in Asia in the mid-seventies looking for someone that didn't like the British very much at all. He found him (and a great deal more), eventually. But not in Battambang. Mr Barcclough is one of George Smiley's cover identites. 
> 
> _The Honorable Schoolboy_ is the sequel to _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ for those of you who are interested, I highly recommend it.

Douglas doesn't particularly care that Carolyn has loaded down the aircraft with an obnoxious American food critic and his crew. They could be Martians, for all he cares. Arthur's excited, of course, something about what one of the producers gave him (he think it's alive and he wonders how long it'll be until Carolyn finds out), but he's exhausted. And furious. 

It's just one more birthday of Cat's that he's missing. Douglas just hopes she's not too disappointed with the substitute – a ridiculously expensive packet of concert tickets and some cologne he managed to take off of an American customs officer in exchange for… he can't even remember now. 

"And where are we taking this unfortunate group?" he asks, leaning back in the rickety chair that threatens to collapse under him in the dingy office that Carolyn booked between flights. He had been looking forward to a day or two of shopping in Hong Kong before making the trip back to England, just in time for Cat's birthday, and maybe with a little something extra for her. Now, Douglas seething, of course, but it wouldn't pay to let Carolyn know that. 

"It's a simple drop off. Cambodia, Battambang." 

The front legs of the chair hit the ground with a loud thump and all of a sudden Douglas really _really_ wishes that he drank again. 

"Oh, _Carolyn_!" Martin begins to whinge. "We'll have to rearrange the entire rota! Do you have any idea how long…"

"Don't know, don't care," Carolyn snaps back. "I'm not paying yo- I'm not paying Douglas to speculate. I'm paying Douglas and not paying you to get us there. End of story."

"Douglas…" Martin tries appealing to him but Douglas doesn't hear.

_Get a grip, Richardson. It's been thirty years. You were young and stupid and that's not the case anymore. You can handle this._

"Douglas, you operate out. Martin, you operate back." Carolyn's voice floats through his consciousness. 

"Douglas?" Arthur asks. "Are you all right? Only you've gone sort of… grey."

"No, Arthur," Douglas manages. "I'm perfectly fine. Shall we off then? Up, up into the wild blue yonder?"

"You're not going to argue? This will put us miles out of our way – and you'll miss your daughter's birthday!" Martin's still arguing. 

Well, it looks like he was going to miss Cat's birthday anyway. 

Which is when he remembers how she got her name.

* * *

GERTI's humming as well as she ever does once their airborne. 

"Post take off checks complete…"

_It'll be hot there. Douglas remembers the heat. Humidity: his shirt clinging to his back beneath his uniform jacket, Sweat trickling down the back of his neck, his hair beneath his hat completely soaked._

_Jerry's quicksiver grin that sucked the breath out of him._

_Jerry's ridiculous hat._

"Douglas… are you…"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry – just lost in thought" Douglas jerks himself back to the present. If Martin notices he hasn't started a word game, he doesn't say. Which is just as well. He's not in the mood.

_"You won't need that here, old sport," Jerry points out, his linen suit crumpled beyond repir. Nor your jacket. The trick, sport, is to lie low. They don't like you here, nobody does, but you have a job to do and they understand that."_

_Douglas knows better than to ask who. With Jerry, he's definitely learned not to ask. For a man that talks as much as he does, Jerry's very quiet about what he actually wants to do in Battambang._

_But then, Douglas is young and stupid and being paid an obscene amount of money to fly right into the teeth of a battle. And God knows, he can use the money._

"Passenger Darby?" Arthur must have asked it about four times before he noticed. 

"Erm… What's the field?" he asks. Apparently he agreed to wager the Camembert on this one.

* * *

Douglas checks in with ATC and wins the Camembert. 

_On the flight out, Jerry tells him all about his daughter. Cat – short for Catherine. And his relative – Douglas' not sure if it's his mum or grandmother, until he cottons on to the fact that she's his stepmother, sort of – Pet. And then there's the girl whose name he won't mention that he met in Italy._

_And as he's about to start the approach, just as things are getting really tense and Douglas thinks he might break his jaw he's clenching it that tightly, Jerry tells him who it is he's looking for._

_Which is when Douglas realizes just how deep in the shite he actually is. Because no sane man goes looking for Charlie Marshall._

* * *

Cambodia is covered in cloud and it takes every ounce of concentration he has to avoid the thunderheads. 

Douglas hated it then, too. Beside him, Douglas can hear Martin sucking in his breath every time they bank what he thinks is too sharply, but Douglas knows he has control. He can remember every single bank, every turn that he had to make the last time he was here. 

Battambang ATC is a woman with a cheerful voice and the barest trace of a French accent who hands off the coordinates and wishes them well. Not like the last time when he just had to hold his breath and hope for the best.

Lightning crackles just to his left and Douglas nearly jumps. Martin does and under any other circumstance he would have poked fun. 

_It's raining. Sheeting down, and Douglas can barely see the runway. Which is just as well, because there's not that much runway to see. Mud and Quonset huts._

_"Watch out for the stray goat, sport," Jerry says. He's got a fatuous grin on this face – not the quicksilver one that sets Douglas' heart racing even though it never seems to extend to his eyes, no matter how drunk he gets. It's the fatuous grin, though, that terrifies Douglas more than the rain and the lightning. The aircraft – an aged DC-3 is placid and staid – certainly more so than he or Jerry right now. He's sitting in the co-pilot's seat, jiggling his leg and staring out the window. Sweat is pouring off of him._

_You can just do this, Douglas thinks. Straight in – no ATC to worry about, you can take the shot at the runway, drop him off and get the hell out._

_Obscene amounts of money can do that to a man._

_So can a winning smile, apparently._

_As Douglas makes the final approach, Jerry coaching from the back – using a bizarre amalgamation of cricketing terms and aviation jargon – a burst of gunfire rattles to thier left._

_"Don't lose it, sport! They're throwing the googlie, but it's not at you. Don't lose it, dammit!" Jerry shouts and Douglas grips the control column and hangs on, trying not the slam the aircraft on the ground as if he were trying to cause an earthquake._

Douglas skids to a stop and taxis over to the stand. The rain is sheeting down. 

The tarmac looks nothing like he remembers it. 

The Quonset huts are gone. 

The carcasses of stripped DC-9's are gone. 

The runway doesn't have bomb craters in it anymore.

There's not a goat in sight. 

Martin's staring at him like he's gone mad. At least that's normal.

Carolyn's in the flight deck shouting at him. 

Douglas does his shut down checks and bolts from the plane, making it as far as the tarmac before his body rebels and his stomach heaves and he vomits.

"Well, if that's the way you're going to treat landings from here on out," Carolyn's sniping. "I don't blame you."

Douglas wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and staggers to the terminal – surreally metal and glass and plastic. 

_"I'll send a wire," Jerry says. "If I need anything else. Or if I can't find old Charlie. You'd better take off, sport, before they notice you."_

_The problem is, this isn't the first time Douglas' flown into Battambang. Jerry's not the only man with an appointment here._

_With Jerry out of sight, doing his gormless tourist act, a disgustingly filthy man sidles up to Douglas and passes him a bottle of what he hops is whisky. He takes a sip and it's Jack Daniels. Probably twenty years old at this point. More like antifreeze than anything else. But it does what it's supposed to do._

_"You go now," says the filthy man. "Plane full. You go before you found. Jungle alive tonight."_

_It stops raining long enough for Douglas to taxi back onto the runway and lumber up into the sky._

_The gunfire is now concentrated a few miles off. The shelling, he hopes, won't start until later. All he had to do was deliver and pick up the package. The tiny airport in Kuala Lumpur won't notice another rattletrap DC-3 with an English captain wearing epaulets from an airline that doesn't exist, bringing medical supplies… somewhere._

_As he banks to the right to avoid the anti-aircraft fire (so much for hoping), Douglas reminds himself that he's just delivering a package. And that he's just been paid an obscene amount of money to do so. And that he isn't supposed to like, get to know, or hobnob with the passengers._

_Especially not ones with beautiful lips and strong hands that could, if their owner were drunk enough, coax the very soul from Douglas. Douglas hopes that his own performance wasn't as lackluster as he seems to remember it. God, it was… desperation fuled and probably no little amount of booze. Not that Jerry'd ever mentioned it afterwards. But then, Douglas didn't either, so perhaps that was all for the best._

He watches the rain fall as he stands in the crew canteen waiting for Carolyn to finish with the tourists. It feels like there's ice where his heart is supposed to be and he wonders if it's a heart attack. He hopes so, keeling over now instead of having to go back to Fitton and apologize to his daughter, again. Keeling over now, trying to remember, trying to forget. 

At that moment he manages to remember that Jerry did get out all right. Only to be shot later. 

For a girl, he's heard. All because of a girl. 

When Douglas made his report to Mr Barcclough in a seedy hotel somewhere around King's Cross, and when Mr Barcclough told him that Jerry had made it out, and then when he'd read the newspaper report – written by a man named Craw – he remembered the conversation about cricket. And his daughter Cat, short for Catherine. 

Douglas was drunk for three straight days after that. Which must have been, although damned if he can remember, the weekend that he met the first Mrs Richardson.

Douglas shivers in the air conditioning, leans against the window and closes his eyes.

"All right, drivers!" Carolyn shouts. "We're off. Going home tomorrow. Come along, Douglas. Douglas!"

Douglas jerks upright. 

"Sorry, Carolyn," he says, pasting on a smooth smile. "Miles away."

Carolyn harrumphs and stomps off. 

The motel is shiny and plastic and tacky. And of course he ends up sharing with Martin. Marginally better than sharing with Arthur, he tells himself. 

Douglas turns out the light, listening to Martin snuffle and shift about in the other bed.

Contrary to his hopes, he does dream that night. 

Of fire, and sheeting rain, and bomb craters in the runway, and the faces of two men – one too old to be doing such a job and one too young. Of a cricket bat that he still keeps under his bed. Of a bumbling figure in a crumpled linen suit, smiling and clutching a notepad and a shoulder bag. Of ice in his heart and lips that are hot and a body that's hard against his, the planes of a man and not the curves of a woman. And Jerry's touch to his shoulder that lasted a bit too long as they parted ways on the rutted pitch that passed for an airfield all those years ago.

Thankfully, if Martin notices that his face is wet when he wakes up the next morning, or that his hands are shaking as he pours the coffee, he doesn't say anything. He does, however, put his hand on Douglas' shoulder, opens his mouth to speak and then seems to think better of it. Douglas nearly drops the coffee cup. 

GERTI lumbers through the storm soaked clouds and Douglas' head is pounding. And he's definintely not thinking about the fact that when he awoke, he could taste the Jack Daniels (which really wasn't Jack Daniels Douglas decides) in his mouth, the smell the smoke and mud and muck again. 

From the last time he was here.

**Author's Note:**

> Cabin Pressure and The Honorable Schoolboy are not my creations. I play with them and promise to put them back neatly. Special thanks to Mundungus42 and Bluestocking79 for whipping this into shape.


End file.
